With Mercy Towards None

Chapter Twenty-Four:

REVELATION

T he fat man was never more circumspect. He traversed an inhospitable land infested by piratical deserters from both the Itaskian army and Host of Illumination. These renegades preyed on everyone. The locals therefore greeted any stranger with violence, fearing he might be scouting for one of the bands.

Disorder held sway from the Scarlotti north to the Silverbind. He had survived that chaos. He had evaded misfortune week after week, making his way toward Portsmouth where the remnants of el Nadim's army yet awaited the Disciple's command.

"Self, am cast-iron fool," he berated himself at one juncture, forty miles from his destination. "Should be bound for easternmost east. Should be headed for lands where good sense is rule rather than exception, where man of skill and genius would have half chance to prosper."

His talents were wasted on this mad country. Its people were too damned suspicious and too impoverished. The to and fro of armies had destroyed tens of thousands of farms. Plunderers had carried off any wealth that had existed there. The natives had to scratch and fight to survive.

He was losing weight. Hunger was a monster trying to gnaw its way out of his guts. And he had no props with which to ply his trade even had he been able to gather the marks. He had had no time, and no money, to assemble a new inventory.

He never stopped asking himself what he was doing in this mad country, and still he went on. He had to get close to the eastern army. He had to know. He could not go on wondering if Sajac were out there somewhere, stumbling along on his backtrail, closing in for the kill.

That need to know had become an obsession. It drove him more mercilessly than any slavemaster's whip.

For the first time in his life he fell into the habit of introspection, trying to discover why this was so important to him. He encountered the shadowed reaches of his soul and recoiled. He dared not believe that such darknesses existed within him. He found his love-hatred for the old man the most repulsive monster hidden there. He wanted to be possessed of no feelings for Sajac at all. He wanted to be able to exterminate the old man like the louse he was—if he still existed.

He did not want to care about anybody but Mocker.

Yet he did care, not only about Sajac but about the friends he had made during his wartime adventures. He had grown fond of Haroun and Bragi, both of whom had treated him well and who had been understanding about his constant making an ass of himself.

Often, late in the night, he would waken and find himself afraid. It was not a mortal fear, a fear of this enemy land, nor was it a dread of specific enemies. It was a fear of having no more cause and no more friends and being totally alone.

He did not like that fear. It did not fit his image of himself as a man at war with the universe, beating it again and again by acuteness of wit. He did not want to be dependent on anyone, especially not emotionally.

He began to hear news of the eastern army as he neared Portsmouth. That last remnant of El Murid's might was preparing for a homeward march. An Itaskian force was camped outside the city ready to assume control when the easterners departed.

News was always a few days old. He lengthened his stride. He did not want to arrive only to discover that his quarry had departed by another route.

His always inimical fate must have dozed off. He ran head on into one of his rare strokes of fortune. He reached the city the morning the easterners departed. He ensconced himself on a rooftop for four long hours, reviewing the Host.

Nowhere did he see a blind old man.

The thing that drove him was not satisfied. It wanted the where, the why, and the how of the old man's separation from the Host. Cursing himself for a fool, he stalked the easterners down their road toward home.

On three different occasions he isolated a soldier and put him to the question. Two had not known Sajac. The third remembered the astrologer but had no idea what had become of him.

Mocker squealed in exasperation. He cursed the gods, one and all, with a fine impartiality. They were toying with him. They were playing a cruel game. He demanded that they cease their torment, and that they let him know.

He became so frustrated that, in one of the Lesser Kingdoms, after failing in a fourth attempt to isolate a soldier, he went to a priest for advice.

The priest was no help. Mocker refused to reveal enough of the story for the man to hazard offering advice. He simply told the fat man, "Nothing is certain in this life, my son. We live with mystery. We share a world shrouded in uncertainty. For those without faith, life becomes an interminable journey fraught with the perils of being unsure. Come. Let us pray together. Put your trust in the Lord."

Salvation was not what Mocker had in mind. He stamped out of the rectory snarling about not getting caught in the world's oldest scam, about the effrontery of a priest who tried to con a master con artist.

He trailed the eastern army all the way to the Sahel.

He stood on a low swale staring at the barren hills, recalling what it had been like passing through them, going into the desert with Yasmid and the Invincibles. He could not penetrate those badlands without attracting the attention of the savage Sahel tribesmen.

"Woe!" he cried, after debating with himself for half a day. "Self, am accursed. Am doomed to remain wanderer in fear, ever watching backtrail lest doom steal upon self unnoticed." He again cursed all the gods and devils he knew, then turned westward, shambling shoulders slumped. Bragi and Haroun would be somewhere along the coast, he supposed.

Two days later he entered a village unscathed by war. The dogs did not growl and attack. They just barked out his arrival. The villagers did not rush out with hammers and knives and threaten to make pet food of him if he did not make himself scarce.

The townspeople were adherents of El Murid's Faith. He arrived during an hour of worship, while the muzzain was singing a prayer from the steeple of a church that once served another god. When prayers were over the villagers received Mocker with charity, offering him food and drink and asking only that he repay their kindness with a few hours of labor.

Work? Mocker? That was as implausible as asking the sun to stand still. Yet work he did, and marvelled at himself as he helped clean a stable. He tried entertaining with a few tricks but was admonished because they smacked of sorcery. The townsfolk were conservatives who hadn't warmed to the Disciple's shift in attitude toward the dark arts. In any case, the old man who lived in the temple had shown them all those tricks already.

Mocker's eyes grew huge. Old man? Tricks? Temple?

But... Could it be... ? No. Impossible. Not a chance. Things did not happen that way. The gods did not torment you mercilessly, dangling your heart's desire just out of reach only to throw it into the dust at your feet, contemptuously, when you abandoned all hope. Did they?

He was so nervous and eager that he went to the extreme of taking a bath before attending the next service. He had learned that the old man in question was blind and on his last legs. The temple had taken him in out of charity. He had helped the priest where he could, which was very little, and in return received a place to lay his head, two meals a day and someone to bury him when he died.

A strong emotion hit Mocker when he heard this. He could not identify it immediately. Then he realized he was sad for this unknown old man, crippled and dying alone and unloved, nurtured only by the charity of strangers.

That feeling grew stronger as the hour of worship approached. It baffled him when he tried to probe it in an attempt to unearth its genesis and meaning. He became confused and, in an odd way, frightened. And he wondered constantly if this really could be Sajac.

He joined the worshippers as they drifted toward the temple. Several remarked on how clean and shiny he looked. He grinned idiotically and responded to a few feeble jests.

The nearer he approached the temple the more difficult it became to keep going. More and more of the villagers passed him. In the end, he stood a pace outside the temple door, alone, motionless, wondering what he would see when he stepped through. A feeble Sajac helping the priest? Or some complete stranger?

Three times he tried to take that last step. Three times something held him back. Then he turned and walked away.

In the final summation, he did not need to know. He could walk away and let the pathetic creature in the temple be whomever he wanted.

The need had left him. Empathy had banished hatred.

He resumed his westward journey.